


Weary

by TheWingedSwine



Series: Welcome [1]
Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Abandonment Issues, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Graphic Description, Heavy Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Identity Issues, Self-Esteem Issues
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-24
Updated: 2020-10-24
Packaged: 2021-03-04 04:42:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,921
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24697771
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheWingedSwine/pseuds/TheWingedSwine
Summary: Loki didn't understand why some people seemed so intent on dying in the same hole they were born in.Perhaps she could teach him a thing or two.
Relationships: Hulk & Natasha Romanov, Jane Foster/Thor, Loki (Marvel) & Original Character(s), Loki (Marvel) & Original Female Character(s), Loki (Marvel) & Reader, Loki (Marvel)/Original Character(s)/Reader, Loki (Marvel)/Original Female Character(s), Loki (Marvel)/Reader, Pepper Potts/Tony Stark, Tom Hiddleston/Loki/Original Female Character(s)
Series: Welcome [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1902250
Kudos: 9





	Weary

**Greetings, _newest friend,_**

**Let's have a look at you.**

**Fellow weary traveler,**

**I know not what you've been through.  
  
**

**But welcome to my humble home,**

**Where the table has been set,**

**With food so rich and hearty that,**

**Your tongue won't soon forget.**

**Come into my garden,**

**Where the blooms grow light and high,**

**The petals soft, the stems are strong,**

**And the hedges touch the sky.**

**Be not afraid, _companion_ ,**

**Of the gates or winding stair,**

**Just walk right in and we'll begin,**

**Your burdensome repair.**

**I only mean to _help_ you,**

**With these practiced hands of mine.**

**With tender love and gentle care,**

**You will be healed in time.**

**So _welcome_ , weary traveler,**

**To a life you've never known.**

**Where the hearth is bright,**

**All through the night,**

**And you'll never be alone.**

* * *

_He woke to the sounds of chaos._

Voices murmured and objects clicked and whirred all around him like a scolding mother and the light above his head was blinding; A blue and black mess of streaks across his vision that wouldn't go away no matter how hard he blinked.

" _Welcome, weary traveler_ ," A light and happy voice cooed beside him. His hand went to wipe at the thick feeling around his eyelids but cuffs of metal bound him to the cold surface he lay upon. " _Let's have a look at you_ ,"

It took a moment; he couldn't feel his limbs. He couldn't match a face to the voice. "What is this place?" The words struggled from his throat.

"The MedBay of the Academy of Neutrality."

"The _what_?"

"MedBay. Or Sick bay, or hospital, or _ward_ if you like. I-"

_"How did i come to be here?"_ He snarled irritably, cutting through the rambling tangent of the person hovering over him. Their head blocked a section of the light and came closer, but no matter how he strained he still could not make heads or tails of the situation. He tried to remember...All that came to his mind after the Avengers apprehended him was the feeling of wind against his face and sky in all directions. Where had he landed, and who now had taken him hostage?

" _Oh_!" The formless blob moved away, leaving him at the mercy of blue and black once again. "Well, our Gatekeeper isn't exactly sure how you ended up here. We sit in a pocket dimension on the outskirts of most known realities; it's impossible to reach without a guide. Or, at least, we _thought_ it was."

He blinked heavily and continued for a long moment without responding but the rambling ceased and he assumed the neusence had gone. Slowly his vision returned and he realized there was still someone standing beside him.

A woman with tanned skin and a series of long scars running across the middle of her throat looked at him intently. The thick booklet in her arms matched the color of her eyes- a deep, dark green. "Do you have any more questions?" She asked quietly.

He glanced all around and finally noticed the barrier above him. A thin sheet of light that encircled him from head to toe. He considered his position. The many, many people glancing at him nervously from every angle. His bound limbs. The weak beat of his heart. The nausea growing in his gut. "Am i a prisoner?"

"No, no, you're a _patient_." She rifled through a few loose papers and pressed one to the top of the capsule he was in. sheet of light parting politely so he so he could see her frantic scribblings. _Magic,_ he noted. "when you arrived you began to...how do i put this gently... melt?... crumble... _disintegrate_!- you started _disintegrating_ and i put you in this welping chamber to stabilise you," the paper was replaced with the palm of her hand, mangled with scars, much like the ones on her neck. "may i ask the next question?"

A deep breath entered him and he cursed himself, not entirely sure what to make of the whole thing- the annoying woman, the strange place, the bustling crowd of people scuttling about their business around them. Why couldn't he break his hands free? What spell had she cast on him?

She continued without an answer, hand poised over a page in her book. "Where did you originate?"

The thought of _home_ , the one that was never truly his to begin with, made his head ache but he found himself too exhausted to argue against the intrusion. "Asgard." His head rolled to the side. Away from the stranger. _Away from the lights_.

"Oh dear. Asgardians are on the very bottom of our known species list." She waved her hand and by extension, the table he lay on moved upward, bending him into a sitting position far too fast for him to acclimate. Her eyes kept glued to her writing as she made several more waves to move him where she wanted him. "I think that's mostly because we've only ever had _one_ visit before."

He was breathless by this time, growing more agitated by the second. He still couldn't pull his limbs to freedom. "So long as it wasn't _Thor_ -"

"Ah!" The woman was cheery as a child, smiling with excitement that only served to bitter him down to the very core. "That's exactly right! Thor _Odinson._ Couldn't get the trainee girls off him. he a friend of yours?"

_Damned woman,_ Loki screamed in his head, _damned LIGHTS._ "I'm _**not**_ Asgardian."

"Then what race should i note on your medical file?" The woman paused over her papers and for once her grin narrowed with the anticipation of his answer. She would never recieve one.

" _Call me what you will_ ; i have no interest in the matter."

To his annoyance the far-too-genuin smile returned and her tone softened into a lull he could hardly hear in the busy ward. "That's very backhanded for someone in such great need of our help."

His eyes turned up for the briefest moment and it seemed the dark lights had spotted the edge of his vision. Once more; twice, _thrice_ he pulled at the cuffs with no success. A growl ripped from his throat but there was no strength in it. He didn't feel like himself- and he'd had _enough_ of this. " _You_ are the one who will need help if I'm not released _immidiately_!" The sound of her pen scraping paper almost drove him to madness. Perhaps it was his inability to move that was making him so frantic- clouding his judgement and keeping any well needed rationality from settling in his heart. 

The woman barely took notice of his distress. "I understand the claustrophobia but this chamber is your _friend_. Without it, you would be too dead to yell at me."

Before he could say much else, she touched his knee a bolt of freezing cold stabbed through his legs. His head was well above hers from the harsh angle she had twisted him into, allowing for a less pathetic attempt at intimidating the woman below. But she hardly gave him the satisfaction, only looking at his face long enough to give him a flash of those eerie dark green irises.

"It's a pinning spell. When i finish you'll be able to move again, i just needed to be sure you wouldn't kick me." Her hand moved right through the veil surrounding him again, touching what skin was exposed with warm and steady hands.

The effort to calm himself was unbearable. He had no authority here, it seemed. He had no authority _anywhere..._ "You said before, this is an Academy." He chanced, expecting silence. After all, were he in her position, he would feel no obligation to answer. "Is that what is taught here?"

"This is the Academy of Neutrality. The curriculum discourages tricks," her hand hovered over a page in her tome, willing small lines of text to appear between previous notes, all apparently pertaining to his own health. How long had he been here? "The previous Head Nurse taught me a few things to make the job easier though. Other workers use Magic here and there, but none of us know the deeper arts."

His lips pursed. The mass of people had slowly trickled out and those left were tending people in beds, far more comfortable in appearance than the table- like contraption he was strapped to. The people in those beds were bandaged and stained red- broken and dying from the look of things.

It crossed his mind that his _condition_ might be more serious than she was letting on.

"You have a little internal bruising, but you'll live." When there was no more empty space on the page to fill with jargon, she turned the page. the crackling sound of the old paper was static against his brain. "heart rate is fine. Pupil dialation and blood flow is correct from what i see..." Her brows pulled together.

It did something to his nerves and the breath hitched in his throat at the slow downward turn of her lips. A frown looked out of place on her face. "What?" He barked. the words coming more nervously than he intended.

"You haven't told me what you are so I don't know what your normal temperature is supposed to be."

"What is it currently?"

"Two- hundred and seventeen."

"That sounds right."

She grimaced, making quick glances between him and the notes in her grimoire. "Does it _really_?"

"If me not being dead is any indication,"

After arguing back and forth with the woman for what seemed an eternity, she relented and added the information she was given. She freed his limbs but instructed him to stay behind the thin veil of magic. It was strange to be treated this way. To be ordered and _handled._

"We don't have the luxury of a Soul Forge so until we can somehow confirm you won't die if you leave, you'll be a student. You'll also be sleeping in the welping chamber."

It was apparent she had no idea who he was. It suited him just fine, but the powerless feeling did not. He rubbed his wrists where the cuffs were and, with her help, moved down from his seat to stand. He regarded the woman carefully. Her clothes were the same that he could hardly tell her apart from anyone else in the place if he weren't looking hard enough. "What is your name?" He watched as she scuttled about the station, picking things up and putting them away, not daring to move a muscle, lest he fall over from the nausea.

"Ahkmakila Kimanenaieshique."

She didn't look up as she said it but he stared until his silence forced her attention to him and a laugh bubbled from her chest. "Keela then. And yours?"

"You can call me Loki."

* * *

I left the MedBay feeling cheated and _egregiously_ overworked. But that was no surprise when both of those things were absolutely true.

Naan told me this new man who'd arrived was a bad omen. _A curse,_ she'd whispered, _he brings misfortune. He brings_ ** _death._**

The more often she said it, the weaker my resolve became. it took no less than thirteen days to bring him back from the brink of demise, and in that time we had lost three other patients. It was my fault. I wanted him to live _so badly._ The worst part was i didn't even know why. And when it was all finished- before i handed him over to Naan- I briefly considered telling her she was right all along.

Kai waved to me from his seat in the courtyard and i joined him while he ate. I was thankful that he didn't ask how i was feeling, even as a courtesy, because i knew the both of us far too well. I knew i would tell him about the misplaced blame and i knew he would say something to make me forget all about it.

And i knew,

I _knew,_

that one day i would be sleeping. Or eating. Or enjoying the breeze, and suddenly remember, with agonizing clarity, the good people who had died under my watch and the unkind man i had sacrificed them to save.

It seemed i was lucky this time. He looked up as i sat and offered me a bit of his food, which we ate in complete silence. I didn't need to look over to know there would be a wide smile on his lips. I was sure he knew there would be one on mine too.

While the birds sang their songs and leaves swayed in the gentle caress of the wind, the librarian read a book to a group of foundlings nearby. Fairy tales that could make the hardest eyes turn up in wonder.

I wish I could have stayed in that moment forever.

* * *

The staff of the Academy were perhaps _too_ friendly, but Loki found he liked the nurses best.

They answered every question, sumbitted to every request. He learned quickly through them that the Ward had no surgeon. The headmaster was a Vanir and the facility had no guards. "We don't need guards, friend." One of the older nurses chided at his inquiry "You listen to Naan. Naan knows _best_ , she does,"

The arrival of newcomers was always worthy of celebration; of chanting and poetry and uncomfortably intimate touching that Loki dismissed himself from eagerly. He imagined a being- a sadistic, vengeful visitor- slaughtering them all. Removing their joyful heads from their naive bodies. It would happen one day. of this he was sure.

He thanked his lucky stars he would be long gone by then.

Loki looked through the tall fence that separated the medical unit from the rest of the facility, wondering ravenously how far the place stretched beyond what he could see. It was several days of this pondering before he became bored enough to explore what little space was available to him.

It was dull. There were too many people. They were too _happy._

most of the working hands could be seen during the day in large packs and at any time of the night sleeping in random piles in the commonrooms and halls like this. It seemed they were all deeply familiar, and why wouldn't they be? The lot apparently had been together in this wretched, _cramped_ place since birth. This was a nest of rats; a haven of ne'er-do-wells and outcasts from all walks of life, such that he could never see himself associating with under any other circumstances.

Loki kept to himself most days, avoiding eye contact with some and blistering others with it to convince them to move along. Soon, hopefully, he would be allowed to explore the rest of the school. _Not until you're better,_ the scarred woman's voice vibrated through his skull like the shrill sound of a glass at shatter.

She was deep in the veins of this place, for no matter where he turned, he couldn't escape her. Even in the early mornings he would wake to the sound of her _egregiously_ long and _difficult to pronounce_ name echoed by her peers, to her poking and prodding and the dry sound of her turning the pages of her tomes. Her smile was always too wide and her manner too cheery and the way her scars would bunch and move at her neck when her head turned made him sick to his stomach and he would fall asleep to the distasteful thought of her horrible fingers on his skin.

On the third sleepless night, after having charmed one of the night nurses into opening his healing capsule, he found _**her**_ near the fire, constricted by the grip of three toddlers. Her head rested on the bare thigh of a dainty blonde woman and her knees were bent out of the way of another group of people laying below them all. Sleeping bodies strewn about in a mass of tangled limbs. A pair of twins tossed and turned, each accidentally striking the other several times in the throes of slumber, but refusing to move an inch apart.

_Had he and Thor ever been so comfortable with one another?_

_Had he ever loved his brother that fiercely?_

* * *

It didn’t take long for news to spread of what had happened on Terra Prime or how the _aggressor_ behind the massacre had disappeared following his capture. I learned through Naan who shook her head and clicked her tongue. I wondered if she ever tired of constantly being right.

At night before bed I took to checking in on the Aggressor’s progress, lest some small detail evade me. He was always awake, staring at me with those violent eyes and hating me with all the passion in the universe. I remained kind to him, through all of his unpleasantness and insult over a wicked serpentine tongue I refused to be cruel. It made sense, when I found out. That I had been drawn to the world wariness and ache that so obviously clutched at his heart. And the lives I had lost in the process, whose energy returned to _nothing_ to give him the privilege of _something_ ; something that was not quite life but far enough from death to be appreciated, were worth more than bitterness over the words of a man I did not know.

I would do my duty as a healer. I would mend him. The Masters would teach him, and he would go away, as many had before him, regardless of my feelings. I would at least make his stay pleasant. For myself more than anyone.

But, truly, it was unbearable.

Kai noticed the distress in me early on and in my free time tried to distract me with tasks I had no business doing. Wipe the bookshelves, muck the stalls, knead the dough- all things that delighted me nonetheless. Instead of leaving me to sleep in the courtyard, where I knew Naan took her rest each night, he invited me to the common hall, where his Ahzma saved a place for me upon the comfortably crowded floor. she’d come to be a healer also, with careful hands and a kind heart, but I never thought to persue friendship with her until now, as she urged me to lower my head onto her naked lap to coax me asleep. It was easy to see why my brother was so taken with her, and I in turn fell in love as well.

A union I could mostly attribute to my keenness to avoid Loki Laufeyson.

It was on the thirtieth day of his stay in my ward that my faith nearly broke.

My brother chased me up the stairway of the cabins to the hall that marked the beginning of the sickbay. There were few windows between each door but in the ones we passed, the synthetic moon was still high in the fake sky of the facility. Always full and plump with light, it cast a thick beam of yellow hue through the glass and onto us both as he caught me.

“You’ve dealt with worse before, what makes this one different?” Kai’s arm blocked the only exit I could have used to escape into the yard. the look on his face adrift between concern and suspicion “has he _harmed_ you?” His yellow-green eyes narrowed slightly.

I stammered nervously, half lost in the memory of the guest who’d gifted me with the the scars across my throat and half jittery from the lack of sleep. “Wha- I-ah, no, no, I just...” though I had it in me to be cheerful, I hated the feeling of loathing that surrounded the space between Loki and I. I could make Naan Head Nurse for the day. Maybe I didn’t need to put forth the effort. “I’m tired.” Was all I could give him. “Naan has a firmer hand than I.”

“Could you part with your silly books for so long?” The laugh was absent from his question but evident in the corner of his mouth and the crease around his eyes.

He gestured to the heavy tome tucked under my arm and by reflex I moved away before his skin could meet it’s soft leather binding. Naan’s notes were scattered throughout various pages but what she wrote was often scribbled out by me and replaced by my own findings. I had a system and if she knew it, she did not bother with it. I couldn’t hide the frustration at this, for in all the world the collection of grimoires was the only thing I detested sharing. The only thing that was truly mine.

“I suppose I’ll have to prepare for the day...” I pulled the book to my chest for support And comfort, fingers tapping the spine.

Kai’s arm remained an obstacle. A fruitless effort to keep me from changing my mind and running past him. It was a wonder that he suddenly didn’t trust my judgement- he and I both knew I hadn’t a single bone in my body to defy him. “take him out for a bit. The girls are saying he’s been wandering the halls brooding like a ghost.”

“he has been improving but I don’t want him having free reign.” A shiver blew through me. “The bad ones do take time to stop trying to murder everyone in the beginning.”

“You should make that someone else’s problem. Maini, Perhaps.”

“ _Yurekhai_ ,” my head shook in warning. “She would carve me up like a ham.”

“And if he moved too far out of line she would do even worse to Loki the Aggressor. You have said so before, he is still too weak to stand for long, let alone fight.” His arm fell from its post as if the words had broken some spell that was keeping it there. “Why should you alone be crushed by all the weight of this?”

why indeed.

I began preparing for the day after a well deserved embrace and a frustrated sigh into Kai’s shoulder. I would spend today touring Loki and tomorrow I would figure a solution to my problem.

for now though...

He would need clothes other than his own if we were to avoid stares- something to support his still rickety legs and gloves so the orderlies and students wouldn’t complain of the foreign stink left on everything he touched- and he did smell quite badly, of every rock and tree he had ever passed, of every door he had ever opened and all the good and bad things that lie beyond our safe little dimensional plane. Foreign. He smelled of danger. I could argue that drinking our wine for one week or eating our food for two would lessen it considerably, but now that news of his transgressions against Terra Prime had inched it’s way into the school, there was no way to proceed except with tremendous caution.

I collected items I knew would fit him, according to the measurements I’d put in his pages of my tome. A half neck with long sleeves. Trousers that could cover his long legs, and boots the cobbler had made just for him at my request. As I made my way into the bay where he sat awake in his magic imbued capsule, i did my best to ready myself for the coming battle, for convincing Loki to do anything at all had been quite a challenge.  


i hoped beyond hope that he would make things easy, if only just for today.

**Author's Note:**

> Since marvel has now established the multi-verse, I'm popping in with my own universe/dimension and that's where most of this will take place. It's set right after the events of the first Avengers movie and these events will ultimately, but not COMPLETELY change the timeline for each marvel character after that point. 
> 
> The place mentioned (the "Academy") is not a part of the MU or MCU(i made it up and i hope you like the premise.)


End file.
